They wanted Fitzwalkerstan- they got it

There were probably more than a few people in Wisconsin that voted for Scott Walker on June 5 because they believed that he truly cared about their community and that his policies would (somehow) make things better off for them. And a lot of these people that fell for that line lived in rural Wisconsin and exurban Milwaukee. Well check out some recent headlines in Walker Country, and then wonder what those people must be thinking today.

1. There was a pipeline spill in the Town of Jackson on July 17 that has resulted in nearly 55,000 gallons of gasoline going into the ground in Washington County, and resulting in resulting in numerous wells being contaminated and homes not being able to use tap water, or in worse cases, no water at all. The worst part of this story is that it took over 2 weeks for the Wisconsin DNR and West Shore Pipeline Company to give the advisories and take more aggressive action, leaving hundreds of homes at risk.

But why should the people in the Town of Jackson be surprised by the DNR's slow reaction to this situation. Keep in mind what was said when Scott Walker appointed former State Sen. (and developer) Cathy Stepp as DNR Secretary less than 2 years ago.

In an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal...Walker said he chose Stepp to lead the natural resource agency because her experience as both a business owner and a former member of the Natural Resources Board will allow her to balance environmental protection with economic development.

"I wanted someone with a chamber-of-commerce mentality," Walker said.

A longtime critic of the agency she will now oversee, Stepp served on a legislative committee that toured the state seeking comment and criticism about the DNR. And in a post on a conservative blog last year, Stepp said the people who work at the DNR tend to be "anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc." In the same post, she called agency employees "unelected bureaucrats" who tend to "come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with."

I dunno, but I'd say that not being able to use your well water in your own home is pretty "real world", and not exactly something that'll be advertised in the greater Jackson/ Washington County Chamber of Commerce, now is it? But when you have clueless hacks hired to head up agencies and give the benefit of the doubt to businesses to handle problems, it's not surprising that things like this happen.

Oh, and the Town of Jackson's voting results on June 5? Walker 82.8%, Barrett 16.9% Guess they were just fine with this type of lax enforcement of rules then. Wonder if they feel that way now.

2. And another hugely pro-Walker area already knew about the "open for business" DNR, with the continuing fiasco from Herr Environmental and the DNR's cover-up of their destructive waste-management practices. Remember that one from May, where former 262-area GOP Representative (and recipient of Herr donations) Scott Gunderson let Herr off with a minor fine for dumping 3 times the permitted amount of human waste near Oconomowoc-area homes. This incident is also infamous for the interference of State Rep. Joel Kleefisch, who urged the DNR to let his buddies at Herr off the hook.

At a second meeting, on Dec. 20, Kleefisch — who also received $100 in campaign donations from Herr and whose wife Rebecca received $2,250 from the Herr family during her campaign for lieutenant governor — challenged Gunderson to reconsider the citations the DNR was weighing against Herr.

“In the age of the DNR/Wisconsin Governor being pro-business, why is the DNR giving Herr 5 citations and why can’t 2 or 3 be taken away as a show of good faith?” Joel Kleefisch asked, according to Bolha’s notes of the meeting. He also reportedly asked that the fine be reduced. Kleefisch didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Bolha also noted Kleefisch asked Gunderson to write the district attorneys involved suggesting the DNR would be in favor of even lower fines.

Gunderson, Bolha reported, “did not seem enthusiastic about writing a letter” but emphasized the agency “had done everything the DNR could to keep the referral from going to the DOJ where the civil forfeitures could have reached $20,000 to $40,000.”

Other shoes have dropped in this case since that story broke 3 months ago, as the DNR told homeowners in the area they had to pay for their own well tests, instead of making Herr pay for their own negligence. And in the last 2 weeks, State Rep. candidate Scott Michalak reported that residents in the Town of Concord received letters telling them that drinking water in the Town of Concord area was contaminated with E. Coli., which comes from...human waste.

So with that hanging over them, what was the Town of Concord's voting record on June 5? Walker 71.3%, Barrett 28.4%. The adjoining Town of Oconomowoc voted much the same way, 75.8%-23.8% and 75.2%-23.9% for Scott Fitzgerald over Lori Compas. This area was in favor as much as anywhere in the state in agreeing to continue to put business-first hacks like Cathy Stepp and Scott Gunderson in charge of these organizations, so E.coli in their drinking water is the result.

3. The Shawano School District announced last week that their school property tax levy was slated to go up more than 12%, and the district's business manager says property taxes now top state aid as the Number 1 revenue source for Shawano Schools. This is despite more than $250,000 in SPENDING CUTS in its overall budget, and is a direct result of Walker's cuts in school aid passing the buck to the local districts and local property taxes. As mentioned before, numerous Wisconsin districts learned of major school aid cuts from the state in late June, and now have to make up the differences in budget cuts and higher property taxes.

Rural and small-town Wisconsin districts like Shawano's in particular heavily rely on school aid from the state, and don't have a lot of property value to tax to recover from those state reductions. Shawano is only one of many that will be feeling the crunch from Walker's decision to funds roads and give tax breaks to corporations over investing in schools and relieving pressure from local communities.

So how did Shawano County vote on June 5 after Walker's budget had taken effect? Walker 66.1%-Barrett 33.3%

Apparently, this is what residents in that community favored, so I don't expect them to cry over the extra property taxes they're now going to be paying to keep their schools running. But you know they will. And yes, there is a bit of schadenfreude from me, because usually it's us in the thinking world that have to pay for the voting errors of these self-centered types in the sticks.

The real question that I have from these awful situations in Washington County, Oconomowoc and Shawano is "WILL YOU LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS?" I feel bad that these communities have to be hurt in order for them to have a chance to see that the people they vote for don't care and don't have their best interests in mind. But apparently that's the wake-up call many people in these communities are going to need (though I have no doubt many of them won't have the guts to hear the call, and will vote R out of racism or stupidity or lazy habit).

July jobs thoughts

Big news on Friday was the release of the July jobs report, which the media portrayed as a mixed bag, since it was an addition of 163,000 jobs (good, particularly given the weakness in recent reports), but also an increase in the unemployment rate to 8.3% (more on this in a second). Revisions to previous months weren't very different (a few more jobs in May, few less in June), so what do I draw out of this?

First of all, it matches my theory that this remains a slow-but-steady recovery, as private sector jobs are now up by more than 4.5 million in the last 30 months, and above zero when compared to when Obama took office in January 2009 (remarkable given that it was -3.3 million this time 3 years ago, and still falling). Even with GOP sabotage driving down the number of government jobs, total jobs are also back near zero since January of '09. In both measures, this puts Obama ahead of George W. Bush's record for first-term job performance.

A few other things that jump out at me is the seasonal adjustment factor to these numbers. As mentioned previously, I think seasonal adjustments are too big in these reports, as there are fewer "seasonal-only" jobs out there compared to past times, and a more steady amount month-to-month. This drove down the U.S. job numbers for 2nd quarter, but it also drove up the July numbers. Check out the contrasts.

Seasonal vs. non-seasonal job changes, April-July 2012
April- +68,000 seas.= +864,000 non-seas.
May- +87,000 seas. = +768,000 non-seas.
June- +64,000 seas. = +349,000 non-seas.
July- +163,000 seas. = -1,204,000 non-seas.

TOTAL CHANGE= +385,000 seas. = +777,000 non-seas.

This also presents a danger to Obama's job performance number, as August and September act like April, May and June, where the seasonal numbers are smaller than the non-seasonal ones (August's deflator is small, September's is bigger). Especially given school hiring cutbacks, this could be something to watch going forward.

The other interesting note is the unemployment rate. If you do the math on the number, it comes out to 8.25%, which gets rounded up to 8.3%. If it's 0.01% lower, it gets reported at 8.2%, and you can bet lots of media don't say much about it, even though it was still up over June;s 8.22%. Also means there as much that needs to be done to get that rate back down to 8.2% or 8.1% for August.

In addition, the unemployment survey goes the opposite of the payrolls survey, and expects as increase in the number of jobs and workers out there in July.

unemployment survey- July 2012
Labor force- -150,000 seas. = +141,000 non-seas.
"Employed"- -195,000 seas. = -76,000 non-seas.
"Unemployed"- +45,000 seas. = +216,000 non-seas.

Now if the payrolls deflator was used here, it would be expected that the number of those working would go down, but instead, the household/ unemployment survey indicates that employment and labor force should go UP for July. So that strikes me as inconsistent. Interestingly, the non-seasonal "employed" number is up 2.8 million year-over-year, which is above the payrolls number of 1.8 million.

So that's what I read out of this report- generally a mixed decision with a nice seasonally-helped bounceback in employment. Between this and strong retail sales numbers and slightly improved consumer confidence numbers I'd say we're still on a decent growth track for the start of the 3rd Quarter. Much to the dismay of Mitt Romney and the Baggers whose main hope is a bad economy to blame on Obama.

Was it rigged on June 5?

Figured I'd go with the provocative headline here, but it is something that I've wondered since the recall election. Given that there were huge discrepancies between the conservatives being overampled in polls before the election vs. the actual people who voted on June 5, it didn't really add up that Walker's reported winning margin of 6.8% was in line with what those pro-conservative polls were showing.

Then I noticed several online articles pointing out that Wisconsin seemed to be susceptible to voter irregularities and noticed that many rural counties gave voting machine contracts to Command Central at the behest of Waukesha Co Clerk (and GOP hack) Kathy Nickolaus. In addition, many Wisconsinites have been working with Wisconsin Wave and other organizations to hand-count the ballots, so much so that Wisconsin Wave is now reporting that they have no many volunteers they have to turn people away, and that a demonstration of voting machines at GAB that the GAB's Reid Magney described as "standing-room only" (at the bottom of the WSJ report).

Clearly, a lot of people aren't taking the retaining of Scott Walker at face value. So I decided to look at the election numbers themselves, compare them to the last 2 statewide elections (Walker vs. Barrett 2010 and Prosser vs. Kloppenburg, 2011), and see if there was something out of the ordinary in places with these Command Central machines.

Using info from a Wisconsin Wave meeting I attended, I had 30 counties that had significant usage of Command Central machines outside of the Milwaukee area. I then compared those results to 36 other Wisconsin counties that didn't have as many Command Central machines. I also put in a third category that included Milwaukee County, the 4 counties that border Milwaukee, and Dane County, because as I've mentioned before, those parts of the state have unique voting patterns that don't really change much from election to election (they're a turnout game). Plus, Racine County had a heated Senate election between Lehman and Wangaard that could skew election results a bit.

You run the numbers, and here's what you get. I will use the "Dem" candidates (Barrett and Kloppenburg) as the benchmarks:

Command Central Counties
Barrett '10- 43.21%
Klopp- 47.94% (+4.73%)
Barrett '12- 40.52% (-2.69% vs. 2010, -7.42% vs. Klopp)

Non-Command Central
Barrett '10- 43.10%
Klopp- 48.85% (+5.75%)
Barrett '12- 42.67% (-0.43% vs. 2010, -6.18% vs. Klopp)

Milwaukee-Madison area
Barrett '10- 50.95%
Klopp- 51.16% (+0.21%)
Barrett '12- 52.02% (+1.07% vs. 2010, +0.86% vs. Klopp)

So you can see in the non-Milwaukee Madison areas, there was movement to Kloppenburg in 2011, and then movement back to Walker in 2012. But the Command Central Counties had a larger bounce back for Walker and lower share for Barrett, as shown by this graph.

So it looks like the Command Central counties flipped more than 2% for Walker vs. the non-Command ones. If you plug in that difference back into the election, and assume that the Command Central counties voted the same as the non-Command Central ones, Walker still wins, but by about 153,000 instead of 171,000, or about 6%. Not really a significant effect here. (late edit: I did not look at touch-screens vs. optical scan machines, like Richard Charnin did here, and he says there's a clear pro-Walker rigging. I don't have an optical scan vs. touch-screen list, so I'll hold off on this)

The real story when you look at numbers like this is how badly Barrett got beat in the parts of Wisconsin outside of the Madison and Milwaukee areas. If Barrett would have held near 50-50 for those 1.45 million votes, he'd be governor today. Instead, he only got 42.0%, and that was the difference-maker. And these areas were the most likely to fall prey to the Walker meme of "a recall isn't necessary", and it is not hard to imagine that 5-10% of those voters disapproved of Walker but also disapproved of the recall process, and cast their votes for Walker.

In addition to not explaining the need for a recall good enough, it also illustrates the failure of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to get out into the other parts of the state and show the destruction of Fitzwalkerstan. They have to stop assuming that people will just get it on their own, and instead should show that progressive ideas and investments in social goods like education and the environment work and are a much more likely pathway to success than expecting corporates to take of you out of the goodness of their hearts.

But I do appreciate Wisconsin Wave and others continuing to draw attention to the issue of black box voting and the potential for election fraud. Just because the "Command Central effect" wasn't big enough to be the deciding factor in the June 5 election doesn't mean that can't be the case in November, particularly when combine with other GOP rigging such as voter ID and absentee ballot fraud where GOP officials send ballots for voters.

We need to keep this issue of election integrity front and center, because as shown in Racine recount of Lehman-Wangaard, the GOP will do anything in their power (legal or not) to deny a legitimately-elected Dem by any means they can. We should also remind people that just because Scott Walker got more people to vote for him on June 5, it doesn't mean they agreed with his policies, and that it means little for November or for 2014.

You DIDN'T build that on your own- who you crappin'?

It's funny to see Republicans try to continue this myth of the "self-made man", and try to denigrate President Obama for daring to make the following statement.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

So the Republi-posers, desperate to get any attention away from the flailing Romney campaign, have tried to have a number of photo ops with tough-talking business owners claiming that Obama denigrated them, and that they did "build that themselves," and didn't need government help to do so.

Except for one problem- They DID need government help. Usually a lot of it.

In New Hampshire, the star of a Romney ad took $800,000 in tax-exempt government loans and got tens of thousands in government contracts, as well as a U.S. Small Business Association loan of more than $500,000 when got started "with his own bare hands" in the 1980s.

In Florida, a construction business manager appeared at a Romney event, but said the millions she pulls in from contracts from public schools and governments wasn't an example of government helping business.

"[Manager Rebecca Smith said] If the government needs to build a school, or a city hall or a public library, the government has a right to build it with their own forces. The government buys printing paper. Does that mean that a paper distributor that might have a purchase order from a government agency is any less of a business, because the government bought a piece of their services or products?

"Does that mean A.D. Morgan [Smith's firm] is any less of a contractor because we build jails and schools and city halls and libraries? Hell no. Government is people. There is no us and them.

"How can you try to detract from Rebecca Smith or A.D. Morgan by saying: 'You got it from the government?' The government is me."

The article goes on to mention that her father worked for NASA (being paid with taxpayer dollars) and that she attended public schools and got student loans to attend college. Sounds like Rebecca Smith is a shining example of who Obama was talking about, whose ambition was matched by a government investment, and it led to a great result for all involved. So why disavow it?

Here's another in Ohio, where Dennis Sollman showed up in a Romney ad saying the president was denigrating his successful electrical construction company by saying the government helped him. Of course, a quick look at Sollman's record shows millions in contracts from public schools and universities, and it makes you wonder how long Sollman would last if public schools had their construction budgets limited by Romney-style austerity.

Closer to home, Wisconsin TeaBag politicians consistently hit the hypocrisy meter on being "self-reliant" and not in need of government help. Senate candidate Eric (Hedge Fund) Hovde complains about the TARP bailouts of banks, but that didn't stop his company from investing in 33 bailed-out banks that took $188 billion in TARP money, nor did it stop him from being the director of a tech company that dealt with more than $2 million in contracts resulting from stimulus funds. Hovde replies by saying the tech company's CUSTOMERS only took the evil stimulus money, but somehow Mr. Business Savvy doesn't seem to understand that businesses tend to need customers to survive.

Hovde's primary opponent and fellow "entrepreneur" Mark Neumann took over $80,000 in stimulus energy incentives as part of his home-building business, and wrote letters to Congress asking for it to continue.

And we can't forget Mr. Free Enterprise himself, Sen. Ron Johnson, who got to the top of his company by marrying a billionaire's daughter, used taxpayer-funded prison labor to cut costs at PACUR, and had employees go onto BadgerCare to avoid having to pay health care costs; both moves increased his profits and chances of success. (Strangely, RoJo doesn't seem to understand that Obamacare is doing the same thing to make many other small businesses in the country more competitive by cutting benefit costs) RoJo also is a living example of how government infrastructure helps businesses, as he got the City of Oshkosh to give him a $75,000 grant 30 years ago to build a rail spur to allow his company to transport their product. Yet this guy seems to think he built his FIL's company all by himself without anyone else giving a helping hand. Pathetic self-deluded fool.

Look, I understand that the first rule of any GOP in the 21st Century is "What I say doesn't apply to me," but still, why BS about this? The poser from New Hampshire even admits he got a break.

“I’m not going to turn a blind eye because the money came from the government,” Gilchrest said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting some of my tax money back. I’m not stupid, I’m not going to say ‘no.’ Shame on me if I didn’t use what’s available.”

ABSOLUTELY, and there's nothing wrong with that. So why do you have a problem with admitting this, or giving other people the same chance you had to live out their dreams and have a better chance at success?

But I guess that would take away from this tough-guy image they crafted as some kind of American Dream example that they "did it all by themselves." These people are so limited and insecure in where they are that they have to go out of their way to create stories and prevent competition from others who just want the same chances they did, like somehow that'll knock them down a few pegs and reveal them to be not so special and extra hard-working.

There's a great radio segment on 670AM out of Chicago on Thursdays called "Who You Crappin'?", and it basically calls out people in sports and other places out for hypocrisy and absurd inconsistencies. And it's what I want to yell at these big-talking "small business" owners who had so many issues with Obama's statement. They can't admit they are living examples of what Barack's talking about, and they have no gratitude for what they have been given in added opportunities as a result of government programs.

And for those reasons alone, they deserve to get taxed more, because they don't appreciate what they have, and how they were able to get there.

Nope, this still ain't working, Scotty

A few more reports were out this week illustrating that Walker-style austerity continues to hold Wisconsin back from the strong growth that we're seeing in much of the Midwest. This was no more obvious than when shown with the Philly Fed's recent releases of its monthly coincident and leading indexes for all 50 states. These idexes showed that Wisconsin's economic growth over the last 3 months had slowed to 0.18% for the 12 months since Walker's budget took effect on July 1, 2011, which was well below the U.S. rate of 2.74%, and Wisconsin badly lagged all of its Midwestern rivals.

Change in state coincident indexes, Jun 2011- June 2012
Ohio +5.53%
Mich +5.24%
Ind. +3.85%
U.S. +2.74%
Iowa +2.59%
Ill. +2.23%
Minn +2.02%
Wisc +0.18%

And that trend isn't expected to break in the next 6 months, as shown by the leading indexes. Wisconsin is expected to grow at less than half of the U.S. rate through the end of this year, making it by far the worst performer in the Midwest since the age of Fitzwalkerstan began at the start of 2011.

You'll also notice the top performer - Ohio, with a lot of the growth in since last Summer. You may recall that Ohio had a similar struggle to the one in Wisconsin about union rights, and had a little election in November where collective bargaining rights were returned to the public sector with overwhelming support. At the time, Karl Rove's forces were warning of severe job losses and economic recession if these rights were returned to public sector workers. Well the evidence shows that instead Ohio has had the best economy in the Midwest and one of the best in the U.S. since SB5 was shot down, while Wisconsin removed collective bargaining rights, and has by far the worst economy in the Midwest.

And Walker's failures also show up in the long-term trend, as you can see Wisconsin was a middle-of-the-pack Midwestern state when it came to being hurt by the Great Recession, but since Fitzwallkerstan started, it has been left out in an otherwise robust recovery in our part of the U.S., where only the FIBs and the Cheeseheads haven't gotten back to where we were when Obama took office.

But hey, maybe the experts are wrong, and Walker's prediction of "prosperity is just around the corner" is finally going to come true as year two of his budget takes hold. Oh, and we have a headline from yesterday on the Wisconsin economy? Well let me have it!

Huge Plunge in NAPM Milwaukee Manufacturing Index.

Awww, crap.

GDP report- is GOP austerity sabotaging our recovery?

Lots of hype around this Friday's release of the 2nd Quarter GDP report, which showed real U.S. GDP growth at a 1.5% annual basis for April-June. And 1.5% growth isn't anything great, but it's also far from recessionary, and it seems to reiterate that the country continues in a slow but relatively steady recovery. As this chart shows, GDP bottomed out in mid-2009, and has continued to grow for the last 3 years, to the point where we're back above the level we were at when the Great Recession started, in early 2008.

You may remember that President Obama got some grief a few months back for saying the private sector was "fine" in comparison to the public sector, but he was right. Private sector GDP also has been growing in this time period, with more robust growth than the total GDP over the last 3 years, and it is also at higher levels than we were at 4 years ago.

So what's the problem and why are GOPs and others still able to complain about the economy? One reason is the lack of growth of wages and income, with gains in productivity being funneled more and more to 1%ers (most recently illustrated by the skilled worker shortage that is because of companies refusing to pay skilled workers a family-supporting wage. People aren't feeling the recovery because they're not having the GDP growth trickle down enough into their wallets... as if you needed more proof that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

But another reason is because of state and national policies from TeaBag politicians. Government spending in the economy grew in 2008 and 2009 as the recession came on and the stimulus was passed to slow the damage. But it peaked in 2010 and has since declined back where we were 4 years ago.

The corporatist/Bagger ideological commitment to cutting government spending (or changing who gets the money) has put a ceiling on the amount of GDP growth, particularly in the last 2 years. As this chart shows, increased government spending reduced the losses of the Great Recession (making it merely "disastrous" instead of "Atlanta in 1864"). But the government sector has cut back since 2010, turning the Government sector into a drag on economic growth instead of a boost, and it has kept a pretty good private sector recovery from spreading to the nation as whole.

Year-over-year GDP change, 2009-2012

The other interesting part about that chart is that you see 12-month private sector growth has been consistently between 2.87% and 3.57% for more than 2 years, but the total GDP has slipped in spots, in no small part due to government spending cutbacks demanded by right-wing politicians. In fact, government budget cuts have lopped off 1.1% of U.S. GDP, turning 3.3% private sector GDP growth into 2.2% U.S. GDP growth. We might be at 4% GDP growth if we were growing government instead of cutting it, and the added wages, employment, and consumption from government employees may well have offset the extra tax dollars used to increase the spending.

But that's not what Republcans want to see. Remember the words of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Yertle the Turtle (Mitch McConnell) in 2010?



Notice there's not a word in there about "improving the economy" or "getting Americans back to work." It's all about satisfying the ideological goals of fake think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, a natural partner for a GOP who seems to have a motto of "results and reality don't matter."

We also saw this in the Wisconsin Uprising, when then-Wisconsin Sen. Majority Leader (and now MINORITY Leader) Scott Fitzgerald let it slip that Scott Walker's Act 10 moves weren't about balancing the budget, but instead was being done to help Republicans in the voting booth in 2012.



Then these scumbags have the nerve to try to blame Obama for the "slow growth" in the nation. Well, the GDP numbers tell me that our economy is muddling along but continuing to expand, and it's being held back by European-style austerity in the public sector (ask the recession-plagued British how that's working out for them). Heck, imagine if we had leaders who were dedicated in restoring the balance between the 1%er taking class and the 99%ers who made it possible. We'd probably be in even better shape, and with the prosperity of increased GDP actually going to someone other than corporate plutocrats.

Why the Journal-Sentinel won't play it straight

Straight from the business wires this week.

Milwaukee-based Journal Communications, which owns the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, AM 620 WTMJ and Channel 4 TMJ4, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the recall election for Gov. Scott Walker.

The massive spending on political ads for the recall campaign helped Journal Communications boost its second quarter profit by 24 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2011, to net earnings of $7.61 million, the company reported today. Total revenue for the quarter was up 6 percent to $95.5 million.

“Journal Communications had a strong second quarter with operating earnings up 17 percent driven by political and issue advertising and a continuing recovery in many of our local broadcast markets,” said Steven Smith, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Journal Communications.

Oh, and there was also this from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, in its larger story about the obscene amounts of money thrown around in the last year of recalls.

The Republican Governors Association raises much of its cash from large corporations to support GOP candidates for governor around the country through a 527 group named for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service regulations that govern them. During the first six months of 2012 coinciding with the recall efforts against Walker, the association’s 527 outfit raised $29 million, including $792,725 from 19 Wisconsin trade groups, corporations and individuals led by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce which gave the group $437,725.

Why did I bolden the MMAC? Well, because Steven Smith is a member of the MMAC's Executive Board, which means he was part of the group that decided to throw that $437,000+ to Walker's campaign.

Hmmm, no wonder JournalComm's newspaper endorsed Walker - the big boss had already laid down big bets on the guy. What a coincidence that JounalComm radio 620 and TV-4 has RW hacks like Sykes and Wagner constantly giving Walker free air time and giving pro-Walker propaganda!

Then Walker's campaign uses MMAC money to pay for huge amounts of ads on JournalComm radio AM620 and JournalComm TV-4. Which increases the profits for Smith, and allows him to chip into the MMAC's PAC coffers, which makes its way back to Walker's campaign. Kinda of a cool symbiotic relationship, isn't it?

The only people left out are the vast majority of Wisconsinites who need a Fourth Estate to tell them the truth. And now you know why you can't count on Journal Comm's organs to tell you the real story with this failing, corrupt administration- because they've made a lot of money in the process of making sure their boy Scotty stays in power.